7.31.2007

Annie's Time Travel Tuesday today asks for stories of "dates gone wrong". That topic just begged for a quick story...one of Billy's favorites about our dating days:

When Billy and I met, we both worked in the child protective services field...he as an investigator for a contract agency, and me as a foster care worker for the state. Our first actual *date* (not counting lunch at McDonald's:)) was bowling with mutual friends from our respective agencies. We happened to both be on call...and happened to both be covering *two* pagers that weekend (an unusual occurrence). We also each had agency cell phones (back in the days when cell phones were still pretty rare...in fact, they were both *bag phones*, to give you some idea of how long ago it was!)

Bowling was in full swing when the inevitable happened...Billy's pager went off. He called and received the bad news that there was a baby in the ER with slap marks on her face...a priority one investigation which required immediate response. Within minutes, both of *my* pagers went off. Sure enough...same case.

So...our first *official* date ended up in the ER, shared with law enforcement officers and medical personnel. It was a sign of things to come...many more *dates* interrupted by the buzz of a pager or the ring of a cell phone. Funny thing is, that is the only case I ever remember us being called out on *together*.

Must not have been *too* big a disaster, since we were married just over two years later (and while "and neither of us shall ever work in child protective services again" wasn't part of our actual wedding vows, we did commit to each other that we would *not* ever take another CPS job.)